Not one cybercrime conviction in Bengaluru in the past 15 years

BENGALURU: If the track record of Bengaluru's cybercrime experts is anything to go by, the case of the impersonating emails that got Flipkart into a tizzy last week is unlikely to ever be solved.

In the decade-and-half since it was incepted, the cybercrime cell of Karnataka's criminal investigation department has registered 586 cases. Charges have been filed in a mere 158 cases and none has converted into a conviction. Nationally, of the more than 14,000 cases of cybercrime fraud since 2012, according to the National Crime Records bureau, only 40 have ended up in convictions, an abysmal record considering that India with its deep mobile penetration is among the fastest-growing internet markets globally.

In the Flipkart case, fraudsters had sent emails from Hong Kong and Canada, using a server in Russia, to Flipkart's CFO Sanjay Baweja seeking a transfer of $80,000. These dispatches mimicked CEO Binny Bansal's email address.

Now consider that several of the cybercrime offenses afflicting Bengalureans can be traced to a village in Jharkhand's Jamtara district, according to Bhushan Gulabrao Borase, superintendent of police in the state cybercrime cell.Many of the phishing cases in the city have been traced to the village where about 2,000 people do this for a living, Borase said, and several others originate from Nigeria and the United Arab Emirates. But a big roadblock for enforcement agencies seeking to apprehend fraudsters operating from other states is that they cannot enter these territories without the cooperation of the jurisdictional police.

"Sometimes there are links between the police and the people engaged in these crimes, which gives the (fraudsters) a lead to escape when we get there," Borase said.

Iada Martin Marbaniang, another SP in the cybercrime cell, said that offences committed through mobile phones are difficult to trace as even if the originating telecom tower is identified, several hundred users would be connected to it at a given time. Another deterrent in tracing offenders is the lack of a foolproof mechanism to authenticate SIM card applicants.

"There are more than 300 million SIM cards in the country. To make tracking these a feasible option for law enforcement agencies, telecom service providers and banks should work together," said Borase, conceding that cybercrime offences in Bengaluru had increased by 20-fold in the past couple of years.

"Cellphone numbers should be linked with Aadhaar cards. Telecom companies should verify addresses of customers before activating SIM cards." In many cases, the victims are to be blamed, said Hemant Nimbalkar, Inspector-General of Police, cybercrime cell, CID.

"In cybercrime, 99 per cent of the victims are educated literates, so carelessness and irresponsibility sometimes leads them to be victims. People share debit card passwords and do financial transactions online (on shared internet or WiFi. Bringing awareness is the only way to reduce cybercrime."

Offering an explanation for the nil-conviction rate in the city, K Arvind Desai, an advocate who represents the state cybercrime cell in court, said that even if investigators manage to seize an allegedly offending device, it is hard to establish involvement.

"The presence of the accused (in the area from where a fraud has been committed) during the time of the crime can be challenged, resulting in them walking free," Desai said.

A rare recent success for the CID cybercrime police was the arrest in January of seven people, including a deputy manager of Axis Bank, for allegedly hacking digital wallet mobile applications of various banks and siphoning off about Rs 25 lakh.

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